


Fractured Falsetto

by TheDarkFlygon



Series: Caeca Fortuna (Bad Things Happen Bingo) [3]
Category: Inazuma Eleven, Inazuma Eleven GO
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Prompt Fill, Sickfic, Team Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:26:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28740978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkFlygon/pseuds/TheDarkFlygon
Summary: As long as you tell others (and yourself) that you're fine, you'll be, even if everything around you says otherwise; or, at least, that's what Hikaru believes.
Relationships: Kageyama Hikaru & Raimon Eleven (GO)
Series: Caeca Fortuna (Bad Things Happen Bingo) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2097189
Kudos: 7
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Fractured Falsetto

**Author's Note:**

> _Can't you hear it? I'm fine!_
> 
> Written for my Bad Things Happen Bingo card:  
> https://thedarkflygon.tumblr.com/post/639403196939403264/here-is-your-card-for-bad-things-happen-bingo  
> Prompt: Voice Breaking + Hikaru
> 
> I'm deeply sorry to have stolen this pure cinnamon roll's voice for the sake of a prompt fill - it just escaped me.  
> I was supposed to write a very similar idea for "Appendicitis", but I realized it'd be a better fit for a more basic illness like this one. It does flow a little better than my first draft (that I obviously never finished), and it brought me one idea for "Voice Breaking" that seemed pretty good to me.  
> That one is very basic because I spent a couple days in a bad mindspace and suffering from blank page syndrome, but I believe I'm having that beat by now. I'm not sure I even respected the prompt (it ain't a prompt list filled by Fly if he doesn't bend at least one prompt to propose a convenient-for-him interpretation!), nor if I wrote the characters properly. We've all got test runs, after all, and this story was one.

He doesn’t like the concern in Mom’s eyes nor her voice, so when she asks him if he’s fine enough to attend class because he looks a little sick, Hikaru replies he feels fine. Plus, he’s got a presentation to make in class and the team is practicing for a fairly important match after class, so he better head there so they can all train together – it’ll be better for team cohesion, right? Moreover, if he doesn’t show up, they’ll wonder where he’s gone and he doesn’t want to either anger or concern them.

Maybe he just didn’t wake up the right way, this morning. Not being full awake sometimes tricks you into thinking you’re more tired or less aware that you actually are. It’ll pass, he’s sure of it, and he’ll be able to handle practice as well as he usually does.

It’s the middle of winter, so the air feels chilly all around, yet since it hasn’t rained in a couple days, it’s dry and irritates the airways. His throat already felt scratchy when he got out of bed, probably from how much he tends to scream when he shoots or when he needs to wind out, and the weather doesn’t make it better. Mom has allowed him to attend class as soon as he wore a mask just in case he really is sick, so at least it doesn’t cause as much annoyance as it could have. There’s that already!

He read again and again his presentation notes, last night, to the point he doesn’t remember at what time he packed his bag for the last time and went to bed. He assumes fairly late, since it was so difficult to open his eyes this morning. He supposes the urge to yawn will fade out after some time: just thinking of his upcoming presentation jolts him awake.

Class soon begins, which doesn’t surprise him since he was a little late due to negotiating with Mom. The air inside the room is the complete opposite to outside: it’s warm and stuffy, to the point he’s sweating under his uniform, and the difference between the two makes him a little dizzy. He doesn’t remember the classroom feeling that hot yesterday, or the day before for that matter, so it’s a little weird – but he remembers a couple of his teammates (Hayami and Hamano, if he’s not mistaken) complaining about the heaters in the classrooms of Raimon and how drastically they can function from one day to the other, so it must be the heater… maybe.

(He hopes it is, at least, because at times, he feels colder than he feels warm and it’s starting to dawn on him: maybe he’s sick and is just trying not to think he is).

His presentation goes mostly like he planned it to be. He’s not the first to go to the board nor the last, so at least he doesn’t have to worry about being the first or last impressions of the class: that’s already some sort of relief. There’s an issue, however, and it’s not because of his notes or how everyone is reacting: it’s with his throat, which won’t stop scratching, and he has to cough a little from time to time. The teacher doesn’t say anything about it, even if she must be at least a little annoyed by the sound of his voice.

When he finally gets to go back to his seat, he can’t keep a coughing fit in, prompting everyone him to stare at him, dumbfounded. He finds himself rushing to his seat in embarrasment with an unsoothable throat and his legs almost flinching. Not his day… not his day… Practice will make it better, though, he’s sure of it! It’s got to, it’s _practice_ , with the _team_! With his friends! There’s no way that’ll make the situation worse.

He eats lunch on the roof of the school, today. Well, actually, he doesn’t feel that hungry, but he needed to head somewhere that wasn’t as smotheringly hot as the school: the outside seemed perfect for that. The wind is blowing gently through the trees surrounding Raimon, with nobody speaking to break the immersion. He should probably be more concerned than that not to be as affected by the wintery cold outside, but Hikaru doesn’t quite know why: he’s just not cold.

On second thought, never mind, he’s _freezing_ out here. The thing is, he still doesn’t want to go inside his class’s room in case he infects someone: he’s pretty sure he’s sick, by now, and the last thing he wants is to see someone catch whatever he’s infected with. It’s most likely nothing big – probably just a cold – but it can be a pain and grow into something more dangerous. He can sustain the cold a little as he tries to eat some of his bento for a couple minutes so none of that happens, right?

To his surprise, he comes across Tenma and Shinsuke going back to their classroom on the same floor as his. He’s never seen them around, probably because he’s usually inside by this time. They run up to him, smiling, before he sees their faces change as soon as they notice he’s wearing a mask.

“Wait, are you okay, Hikaru?” Tenma asks, suddenly frowning.

“Ah, y-yeah, I’m fine!”

“You’re wearing a mask, though… Doesn’t that mean you’re sick?” Shinsuke questions, as doubtful as one could be.

“It’s just in case I am! My mom wanted me to wear it for today.”

It’s not lying to them if that’s true, right? (His voice sounds very bizarre, like it’s not even is). Neither of his teammates sound convinced, however.

“I see!” Tenma replies with one eyebrow lifted and the other still down. “We’ll see you for practice, then. See ya!”

“See you later!”

On that, both Shinsuke and he leave, waving at him before disappearing inside their classroom.

Guilt (of having at least partially lied to his friends, of not being fully honest about his own worries) eats Hikaru more and more as afternoon classes go on. He’s now nursing a headache that prompts him to drop his pen from time to time so he can rub a temple and hope it goes away (it never does, instead it lingers and strenghtens). He’s having a difficult time following what the teacher is saying despite usually having no issue with math since, each time he tries to focus, his headache worsens and he’s left whistling the pain away under his teeth.

The itch in his throat hasn’t faded away, far from it: it’s not seizing his entire neck. He tries to keep the feeling away by clearing his throat and short bursts of coughing, but it doesn’t work. He knows it’s a vicious cycle, that the more he coughs the more his throat gets irritated; yet he can’t help it, it’s almost as if the gesture is what is keeping him calm despite the bad presentiment bubbling in his stomach about this.

He really doesn’t want to bail out on the team.

At some point, the teacher asks if he wants to go to the nurse’s office after a fit he didn’t manage to keep to himself (it just burst out without him being unable to do anything – he’s the first bothered by this), prompting him to finally rise his head and notice everyone’s staring at him again, except this time, he can tell they’re not so judgemental. He doesn’t like it much more than the impression he got this morning, but he supposes it’s better.

“No need, sir,” Hikaru replies, trying to put on his best smile under his mask. “I’m fine!”

His voice contradicts him, considering it sounds like glass paper, and he wonders how it’s gotten downhill so fast.

“If you say so, Kageyama.” The teacher sounds as convinced as Tenma and Shinsuke did earlier – which means not much, if any. “Simply rise your hand if you need to go there, understood?”

“Okay!”

He doesn’t ask to go to the infirmary for the rest of the afternoon classes, instead trying to muffle his coughing fits as much as possible. Maybe he should, because the temperatures are starting to make less and less sense and everything feels heavy; but he doesn’t want anyone to worry. It’s all he can say, really, and maybe if he convinces the others, then he’ll convince himself everything is well and good.

Classes end and after them comes practice, so he runs out of the classroom with only a few “I’m all good!” to spare and heads straight for the inside soccer field. The air outside once again tries to bite at his lungs, but he only allows it to get a couple coughing fits from it. The main casualty of it is, in the end, his voice – and he’s afraid it means he won’t be able to tell everyone he’s actually not doing too bad, that he can actually practice with them for the match.

When he arrives at the club and says everyone hello, the glances his teammates give him just amplify the fear in his chest. Several of them ask him the dreaded question, to which his answer still hasn’t changed, and Shinsuke points out how tired his voice sounds. He doesn’t have much to do but to admit he’s a little sick, ignoring the way his uniform is sticking to his skin and the way the world is starting to spin around him.

Even as he changes in the lockers, the feeling doesn’t go away. He can only pray nobody else notices the chills going down his body and the fact he looks like he’s already practiced – would he look into the mirror for more than necessary when refreshing his face in an attempt to make the fever vanish from his cheeks, he’d notice the fatigue isn’t just visible on his body.

He puts away his mask inside his bag and exits the changing room’s bathroom, intending on practicing like everyone else and to stay home tomorrow. (Wait, that’d worry them, wouldn’t it? Ha, he’s in quite the predicament, isn’t he?).

Running around is difficult when his throat is pratically begging him to stop and so is doing literally anything on the field. The voices around him are floating, his surroundings keep blurring on and off, the coughing fits are tearing his throat apart. Even after the warmups, he can feel Trainer Kidou’s heavy glance on his shoulders and his teammate’s doubts all around him like a collar that’s buttoned-up too tightly around his neck.

Still, he tries to convince himself it’ll all be fine in the end. It’s just a practice session and he’s sure his teammates have practiced through worse pains than his throat bothering him to no end. The only thing that makes him weaver in his convictions is the way the words he tries to say tend to break apart by the end, his voice suddenly shifting in tones as if someone played nonsensically on his vocal cords (the imagery makes him squeamish, so he tries to focus back onto practice, no matter how much the day has exhausted him and how difficult it is to keep up his optimism).

His bad day clearly doesn’t end there either as, for the first time in a while, someone stops _Extend Zone_ before it can even reach the goal, without even responding with a technique of their own. He watches the purple ball lose its firepower in the hands of his teammate and falls to his knees, the artificial grace rubbing against them, as he loses control over his own body.

He doesn’t even do it on purpose: it’s merely because his legs give in from the shock and the sudden wave of exhaustion. He’d be glad to rise back to his feet too, especially considering he hears and sees everyone running to where he is, saying either of his names in worried voices; but he’s trapped in a coughing fit, yet again, and this one only ends with him almost choking.

The first to reach him is the one who stopped _Extend Zone_ : Kirino, who was merely on the trajectory of the technique because he miscalculated where he was on the field and where the goal was compared to his position. He kneels to his level, putting his hand on his shoulders, only to grip on his shirt in an attempt not to take them off.

“Coach,” Kirino says with a sense of urgency in his voice he can still sense despite his weakened state, “he’s burning up!”

As if teleporting there, Coach Endou takes only seconds before arriving to them, running faster than they’ve ever seen him do. From what Hikaru can understand through the water he feels submerged in, the coach is pushing the others away to let him breathe, before doing like Kirino did earlier and crouching so he can see the man’s face. He’s frowning and there’s little Hikaru can do about it, as much as it pains him to see that expression, especially knowing it must be his fault’s.

The back of a strong hand lands on his forehead, cool to the touch, and he’s tempted to give into the temptation of just leaning into it and let himself be carried away; but he knows he shouldn’t do that and only appreciates the coldness in silence, like a good child.

“I’m…” He tries to reply, pushing on his arms after yet another coughing fit. “Fi…”

His voice breaks again, deforming into that of a person he doesn’t know who’d switch between ranges, his words never finishing before he coughs again.

“You’re not,” Coach Endou comments matter-of-factly, uncharacteristically unenthusiastic, “and that’s okay, Hikaru.”

He finally rises his head, only to realize his coach has been smiling to him all along. That last bit of coughing has left him with tears in his eyes so his vision is a little blurry, but he can sense it: Coach Endou is smiling.

“You’re…” No matter what he does, his voice sounds broken. “You’re sure…?”

“I’m sure.”

Tenma gets closer.

“Why didn’t you tell us, Hikaru?” He asks, sounding strangely quieter than he usually does. “Nobody would have held it against you, right guys?”

From what he can hear, most of the team says yes to the question.

“See?” Ah, Tenma’s smiling, that’s good. “You’ve got nothing to worry about!”

“So, why didn’t you tell us?” Shindou, who appears from behind Kirino, asks.

“I’m not sure if he has the voice remaining to tell us,” the latter replies. “Better ask him when he’ll be better, if you ask me.”

“That’s true. We’ll wait until you get better.”

Coach Endou gives him a hand, so Hikaru takes it, almost falls from a sudden lack of balance. His senses are all mudded, but he can feel the warmth of the team’s appreciation on him, and that’s more than enough for now, he thinks.

Too bad he can’t tell them how thankful he is, at the moment.


End file.
